Apple’s ambitious and laudable target is to provide 100% of its power for corporate facilities from renewable energy.

Our goal is to power every facility at Apple entirely with energy from renewable sources — solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. So we’re investing in our own onsite energy production, establishing relationships with suppliers to procure renewable energy off the grid, and reducing our energy needs even as our employee base grows.

Our investments are paying off. We’ve already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple’s corporate facilities worldwide, we’re at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won’t stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.

Apple have been criticised by Greenpeace and others in the past with allegations that the truth on the ground did not match up to their corporate claims, but the latest news from MacRumors confirms details of a new solar panel farm near the Reno data centre saying that “the 137 acre solar array will generate approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy [per annum].” Read more here.

This is an 18-20MW project. For comparison a typical UK domestic PV solar panel installation is around 4kW (so the solar panel farm will be 4500 – 5000 times bigger). No wonder it will require 137 acres!